Simple Beginnings

2021 Simple Beginnings

By Lorena Infante Lara, PhD

More than 100 incoming biomedical science Ph.D. students participated in the Simple Beginnings lab coat ceremony held Sept. 3, 2021 in Light Hall. The annual tradition welcomes new doctoral students to the School of Medicine and presents them with personalized white lab coats, a classic symbol of scientific training.

“The students with us today have chosen to pursue the highest possible academic degree: the Ph.D. It is a degree that requires the candidate to display academic excellence, and to make original research contributions that advance our knowledge and understanding in a significant fashion,” said Larry Marnett, dean of the School of Medicine Basic Sciences, Mary Geddes Stahlman Chair in Cancer Research and University Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry.

“You have chosen an institution at which to pursue your Ph.D. where the opportunities to make significant discoveries are exceptional,” Marnett said. “Vanderbilt has a long history of curiosity-driven research that not only has elucidated how living systems work, but has set the stage for advances in clinical treatment.”

The ceremony’s name comes from the last paragraph of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published in 1859: “From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Top, four freshly coated PhD students at the Simple Beginnings ceremony. (Marcie Kindred) Middle, Larry Marnett, dean of the School of Medicine Basic Sciences, addresses incoming biomedical science Ph.D. students on Sept. 3, 2021. (Vanderbilt University) Below, Dr. Barbara Fingleton welcomes the new 2021 IGP class who receives their coats. (Marcie Kindred)

2021 Simple Beginnings

“Biomedical graduate school is about gaining many different competencies as well as doing research and making discoveries,” said Kathy Gould, senior associate dean for BRET and Louise B. McGavock Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, in her opening session for students’ families and friends. These students, over the course of their graduate training, will become no less than world experts in their respective fields, she said.

The 2021 entering class of biomedical Ph.D. students hail from 14 countries including the United States and 32 U.S. states and territories. Sixty-one students entered the Graduate School through the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program.

Other biomedical science programs and departments welcoming new doctoral students in 2021 include: Biological Sciences (7), Biomedical Informatics (2), Biostatistics (5), Cell and Developmental Biology (1), Chemical and Physical Biology (2), Epidemiology (7), Health Policy (4), Hearing and Speech Sciences (6), Human Genetics (1), Neuroscience (10), Pharmacology (3) and Quantitative and Chemical Biology (19).

The 2021 event was held in person for students, with family and friends watching via livestream.

Top, all students pose after the ceremony. Right, a new PhD student dons his coat for the first time. Below, students watch as others receive their coats. Bottom, Dr. Kathy Gould begins the ceremony with welcome remarks and the history of the Simple Beginnings Ceremony. (Marcie Kindred)

Abbie Wolf contributed to this story.